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The Doves Type™ reborn.

The infamously ‘drowned’ Doves Type™ has been meticulously salvaged and revived by designer Robert Green, exactly 100 years after it was first thrown into London’s River Thames.

Dec 20, 2010

The first commercially available digital facsimile of THE DOVES PRESS’s lost FOUNT OF TYPE has finally been released in October 2013, marking the centenary of its protracted initial demise.

Ex-disciple of William Morris, T.J. Cobden Sanderson, along with engraver Emery Walker, established the Doves Press in London at the turn of the 20th century. Commissioned in 1899 by Cobden-Sanderson and Walker, punchcutter Edward Prince’s single-sized 16 pt type, used in all of the press’s publications, was a key element of the Press’s influence on modern book design.

In 1913, Cobden-Sanderson began to systematically destroy the entire type to prevent Walker, who was suing to liquidate the Press after their partnership collapsed, from repossessing and selling it. By 1916, Cobden-Sanderson, having spent countless evenings clandestinely ‘dedicating the type’ to the River Thames, had thrown more than 2,600lb of metal bundled into 12 lb paper parcels over Hammersmith Bridge.

After three years research & drawing from original source material, Robert Green’s digitised facsimile of the lost metal Doves Press Fount of Type, The Doves Type™, is now available to purchase. The Imprint font is the first release in The Doves Type™ series, with further styles including a Punchcut weight to follow in due course.